Answered

Flow fetching excel date as integer

(0) Share

Report

Posted on by Bhavpreet

Hello,

I got a flow which creates a SharePoint list item by fetching information from an Excel in another document library. I am using List rows present in a table to get the information. I noticed that it's fetching the date from excel as integer instead of fetching it as date format resulting the flow to fail with the following error.

OpenApiOperationParameterTypeConversionFailed. The 'inputs.parameters' of workflow operation 'Create_item' of type 'OpenApiConnection' is not valid. Error details: Input parameter 'item/DateGiven' is required to be of type 'String/date'. The runtime value to be converted doesn't have the expected format 'String/date'.

There is no option to get the formatted value similar to the one available with For a Selected Row trigger. The flow works fine in that case.

The workaround, I have found so far is using date in text format in Excel which works fine. Is there a way to fetch the date as date format from excel?

Thank you.

Bhavpreet Bains

Categories:

General topics

I have the same question (0)

All responses (2)

Answers (1)

Verified answer

RobElliott 10,397 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at

Like (1)

Report
Copy link

Link copied!

No I don't think is (although happy to be proved wrong). I believe it's a limitation in the way Flow and Excel work together.

Rob
Los Gallardos

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
Brad_Groux 4,556 on at

Like (0)

Report
Copy link

Link copied!

As @RobElliott points out, this isn't possible. The Excel connector functionality is fairly limited (due to Excel's design), and this is one of the many, many known issues and limitations. These issues, are why Microsoft has removed functionality from the Excel connector over the years, not added to it.

When working with Excel files, I always import it to a SharePoint list, and then manipulate the list and formatting as needed, and then plug the list into my other Flows.

With the exception of importing Excel data to a list, I have and will continue to avoid Excel at all cost. I've even gone so far to end exporting to Excel as well, I point all users to SharePoint lists or Power BI dashboards (pointing to the lists) instead. If they want to export those to Excel, they can, but I'm not going to do it for them. SPOILER ALERT: They never export it anymore, Power BI dashboards are too easy to use.

If this reply has answered your question or solved your issue, please mark this question as answered. Answered questions helps users in the future who may have the same issue or question quickly find a resolution via search. If you liked my response, please consider giving it a thumbs up. THANKS!

Was this reply helpful? Yes No